


Just Shoot For The Stars (If It Feels Right)

by Sherlocked



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, F/M, Organized Crime, Witness Protection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-26
Updated: 2013-01-26
Packaged: 2017-11-27 00:42:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/656109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sherlocked/pseuds/Sherlocked
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And aim for my heart (If you feel like it)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Shoot For The Stars (If It Feels Right)

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by the lovely Liz (qsinoroyale on tumblr).
> 
> Plot bunny'd and written in the space of 5 hours the night before.
> 
> Might make this a series, we'll have to see.

No one payed attention to her as she walked slowly into the emergency room. She shuffled up to the desk. The nurse didn’t even look up.

“Can I help you?”

“He tried to kill me...” The nurse looked up for the first time, her eyes going wide with shock.

She knew how she must look- pale from blood loss and listing slightly, along with the spreading crimson patch on her dirty, old t-shirt.

She couldn’t tell what happened next, people were moving too fast, but suddenly she was horizontal and lights were flashing over her head.

Then a mask went over her face and the world went dark.

~

She woke up to the sound of people talking softly at the end of the bed.

When she opened her eyes, she saw that there were two: one tall, white male and one shorter, black male, both in suits and quietly conferring over a folder, on which she could see her photo. She concentrated around the headache that was forming to hear what they were saying.

“- I don’t know, do you think that we should get Holmes in on this? I mean-”

“ _NO!_ ” It was out of her mouth before she even realized what she was saying, and they jumped, looking over to her. She pushed herself up, wincing as the stitches pulled, desperately maintaining eye contact with the superior as he rushed over and tried to push her back down. “I will tell you _everything_ I know about Moriarty, just don’t tell Holmes I’m alive until it’s over.” The detectives exchanged glances.

“Are you sure we’re talking about the same Holmes?”

“Is his first name Sherlock?”

“Yes.”

“Then it’s the same one, and I _can’t_ have him know about me till Moriarty is dead and gone.”

“Why?” She opened and closed her mouth a couple times, brought up short.

“I- I don’t know.”

~

Questioning brought to light that she didn’t know about a lot of things. She didn’t know her name, her age, where she came from, what her favorite food or color was. She didn’t remember anything before a little over a year ago.

“And then,” as she had explained to the Detective, who’d introduced himself as Marcus, “My life basically became Moriarty.”

She talked, the laptop set up on the bedside table recording her every word. She talked about the day she woke up, bandages wrapped around her neck and a blood bag stuck in her arm, a man walking over and asking who she was. She talked about being told her name was Dolores and being called Lo and Lolita all the time. She talked about being trained to be a thief. She talked about being trained to be a grifter. She talked about having a natural gift for hacking, and the feeling that she’d known how to do it Before. She talked about being trained to be a hitter. She talked about anatomy classes with corpses. She talked about practicing surgical techniques with the same corpses. She talked about being given generic jeans and a black babydoll before the training, and then after, when she was deemed ready, being taken somewhere else that reeked of money and was measured and poked and prodded, and then coming back and being given all new clothes. She talked about getting her own room for the first time, instead of a cot in a dojo, with a window and a bed and a closet and a chest of drawers. She talked about how that happened in only the first three months.

She talked about deals. She talked about deaths ordered. She talked about piles of magazines, and the hours spent cutting them to pieces. She talked about packages delivered. She talked about scars, and how she got them. She talked about business associates, both those who knew and didn’t know about Moriarty’s extracurricular activities. She talked about suddenly being woken up and being told to put on pants and a t-shirt and to come quick. She talked about being grabbed and tranquilized the second she got there. She talked about waking up in a dark room and being fed and watered through a slot in the wall. She talked about breaking out and almost making it before she ran into Him. She talked about being shot. She talked about snatching the gun out of His hand and hitting Him with it, dropping it and running past.

She talked even though her throat threatened to close whenever she said His name. She talked till her throat was ragged, and then she drank some water and talked some more. She talked till there wasn’t anything else to talk about.

Once she finished, Marcus hit the stop button on the laptop and placed his hand over hers, and she looked down, honestly shocked by the physical contact. 

At some point, she’d taken his other hand. She’d never noticed. 

~

Captain Gregson visited occasionally, gave them news. He talked about how Holmes was given the transcript of her confession and had immediately asked who this was. He told her he’d said that she was a protected witness. He assured her that he’d hadn’t actually said she.

Marcus had stuck around on babysitting duty. To his credit, however, he did seem to start enjoying it after a while. 

Marcus is the one who picks out her name. Lolita and Lo and Dolores always seemed a bit twisted to her, though she never knew why, but the way Marcus’s eyes widened when she’d told him that tells her that it wasn’t just her. He asks her what she want her name to be, and she shrugs. She blinks when he pulls out his phone and apparently goes to a name site and starts scrolling.

“Abby?”

“No.”

“Briony?”

“No.”

“Calla?”

“No.”

“Delta?”

“No.”

“Eden?”

“No.”

“Felicia?”

“No.”

“Gytha?”

“No.”

“Hailey?”

“No. Are you really going through the entire alphabet?”

“Yes. Ivy.”

“Yes.” Marcus looked up at her, eyebrow cocked.

“Really?” The newly christened Ivy shrugged.

“It sounds, if not right, then at least close.”

Once she can walk, short walks, no running, jogging, or anything else that would make her breathe with her stomach, he takes her for walks around the hospital. Once she can take longer walks, they leave the hospital (Marcus had gotten the bureau to buy her a coat. It wasn’t nearly as nice or as expensive as anything He’d given her, but the look on Marcus’ face when he’d given it to her seemed to make it twice as comfortable) and walk to and through Central Park, taking plenty of breaks. She tries soft-serve, and hot dogs, and pet dogs and caught kids falling off the Alice in Wonderland sculpture. She wanders the Met and the AMNH and pretends to believe Marcus when he said the department covered it. She also tries not to stare at Marcus in a leather jacket, t-shirt, and jeans, head tipped back in a laugh.

She’s released with some prescription pain pills and is told to take it easy. She expects to be put in a hotel and she feels gratified that Gregson seems as surprised as she is when Bell suggests that Ivy come stay with him. He seems iffy about it, but when Ivy agrees he gives them permission. 

She’s taken shopping by one of the female agents with a department credit card and they buy bras and undies and shirts and pants and leggings and dresses and shoes and chokers that cover the long scar on her neck, and then is given the credit/debit card and told she has $50 in spending money on both. She wonders idly how they pulled that off, ‘cause the doctors at the hospital said she was in her early twenties. She comes to Marcus’ building in Chinatown with a brand new suitcase full of brand new clothes that she carries to all the way up the stairs to his top-floor apartment and knocks. The door opens to a slightly out of breath Marcus and a suspiciously clean apartment.

He tries to take the futon and let her take the bed, which she shoots down. When he tries to hedge, she counters with the fact that they’re still working on the case and they have no idea how long she’ll be there, and since he’s the one working, he should get the bed. He looked about ready to start arguing again, but she just gives him an eyebrow and he helps her fold out the futon. 

~

The first time she’s in his bathroom, about to take a shower, Ivy stares at herself in the mirror for a good 15 minutes.

When she was in the hospital, she avoided reflective surfaces, not sure she really wanted to see. 

She takes in the long auburn hair, the tired green-grey eyes, the long line across her neck and the star on her stomach, the soft curve of muscle.

Really, the only difference between now and the last time she saw herself is that this time she is more relaxed, less rigid. 

Ivy rolls her shoulders, nods, and turns to figure out the shower.

~

She borrows his laptop and catches up with the world. She smirks when she goes to retrieve a page she’d accidentally clicked out of (the new tab button and the close tab button should really not be that close together) and sees that all of his internet history prior to giving her the laptop had been deleted.

Marcus’ll come home and tell her how the case is going, and how he accidentally used her deodorant and now Holmes thinks he has a girlfriend, and how Jason in SVU apparently had a thing going with Lisa in the coroner's department but they broke up because they both tried to talk about work. To this, Ivy’ll laugh around whatever takeout they order and tell him about the latest celebrity gossip; apparently, Perez Hilton is her Achilles heel.

~

One day she’s scrolling and sees an ad in the corner of the screen for a recipe site and she clicks through without even knowing why. There’s a recipe for Roast Chicken, and literally the only thing that goes through her mind is _I can do better than that_.

A quick trip to Union Square and the local supermarket and a couple hours later, Marcus comes home to the smell of chicken in his much unused oven and to his unused pans on the stove. He gives them a look before directing his attention to Ivy, who looks up from his laptop with an innocent expression.

They ate (and even though it’d been relatively small Ivy was still surprised they’d eaten most of the chicken) while Marcus told her about how they’d gotten Him, that the captain had made the arrest personally, and that there was a significant chunk of the force that was going to be working night and day on it, but that the FBI and Interpol were starting to get interested. She couldn’t have controlled the grin that covered her face if she tried. 

They almost fight over the dishes, coming to a compromise that Ivy puts things away and Marcus does the dishes, and that works until both turn at the wrong time and are inches away from each other. Ivy starts finding it a bit hard to breathe, as does Marcus, because his mouth drops open.

Next- well, Ivy’s not exactly sure what happens next, except suddenly she and Marcus are kissing, her hands are fisted in his shirt and his are wrapped around her waist and it takes a bit to come up for air, but when they do it’s to Marcus saying, “Waitwaitwait.” Ivy rests her head against his shoulder and sighs.

“Yeah, affairs with witnesses can get the case dismissed.” He sighs, and she feels his head lean against hers.

“Yeah.” He sounds as disappointed as she feels. Ivy pulls back slightly and nods, keeping her gaze down as she backs away and out of the room.

She grabs her pjs and goes into the bathroom, leaving the faucet running the entire time as she carefully and methodically gets changed. She leaves the bathroom with a, “I’m out,” like she always does, and dives under the covers on the futon, reaching out only to turn off the light.

~

Ivy offers to go to a hotel, but Marcus waves her off. She notices, however, that he’s started working later, to the point that she tries to stay up to see him at least once and falls asleep before he gets home.

He comes back with a trial date, and they pretend things are normal, Ivy pretending not to notice him watching her. Once the trial starts, she watches the live feed, watches the evidence come in, watches the witnesses file on and off the stand, tries not to rip the pillow in half at the fact that Marcus was in the same room as Him, and listens to her confession. Even though the scrambler they’d put her voice through had made her sound like a computer, the entire room was in tears by the end. Ivy is surprised. It makes her smile when His cocky smile starts to fade as he realizes he isn’t getting out of this.

Fifth day of the trial, Ivy whoops to an empty apartment when He's found guilty of _everything_ and sentenced to the death penalty. She’s still dancing around when the door opens, and she turns to see Marcus grinning at her from the doorway.

He barely has it closed before she has him pinned against it, kissing him with all the pent up sexual frustration that’d been building up since she’d stopped talking that first time. He pulls her to him with equal enthusiasm, and she wraps her arms around his shoulders.

They pull apart slightly, grinning at each other.

“Bed?”

“ _Hell_ yes.”

Ivy has the feeling that she’d never liked being carried, something about trusting another person with that had made her a bit uneasy, but when Marcus Bell picks her up and carries her to the bedroom, she can almost _hear_ the Pokemon music as a wild kink appeared.

She giggles when Marcus deposits her on the bed, snickers when he tried to loom over her, and laughs when she rolls them over so she’s on top, stopping his protestations with a kiss.

She feels whole. It feels good.

~

When asked, Ivy doesn’t know quite why she didn’t want to see Sherlock till after the trial was over and done with and Moriarty was dead, the entirety of his empire dismantled by various organizations. Her only answer is because, and even she can’t answer the typical _because why_.

So, she isn’t quite sure where the anxiety came from when Marcus brings her with him to work. She taps the desk, and throws a smile over her shoulder at Marcus when he taps her elbow to let her know he’s there. That wasn’t what she was worried about. He’s always there.

It’s the tall man with brown hair and brown eyes with a cardigan and a red tartan scarf that scares her, and her mouth drops open as the memories rush back.

The scarf is hers, she’s 21, she was in college, her mom had moved her to NYC so she couldn’t be with her father, but she’d applied to Oxford so she could. Her favorite color was green, favorite food dumplings. She liked cloudy days, she made her own corsets. 

Absolutely none of these things hit her harder than when Sherlock Holmes stopped in the middle of the hall and stared, the Asian woman following him looking concerned.

She had to give Marcus credit, he did get close on her name.

“Irene?” She grinned.

“Hey, dad.”


End file.
